The Workout Of The Day for Thursday, 12.20.12. “Yaddayaddablahblah”
Howdy folks,
Before we even get started, did you read yesterday’s post?
Do me a favor and check it out, especially if you’re finished – or close to finished – with your season.
Let me know what you think after you read it.
……
OK, back to today’s workout.
Yadda, yadda, yadda, we’re training for Nationals/Worlds whatever, lots of time to go with no racing, blahblahblah…
Yup, we’ve already talked about all that stuff.
So, hey… enough with it.
How about some intervals to help with your explosiveness today?
How about you…
Start Me Up –
Warm up well.
Find a clear, clean stretch of traffic-free open road that will allow you to ride full-gas for 10-12 seconds.
This is important.
You’re going to be going really darn hard, and you don’t want to/can’t be dealing with cars, potholes, etc.
Shift into a gear appropriate for a race-style start (you can/should experiment a bit with this until you get it figured out. This is good stuff to have figured out for ‘cross season, nice side benefit of this workout!)
From a dead stop (or as close to it as practicable…) get out of the saddle and punch it.
Hard.
Full gas, no messing around.
Shift up as necessary to continue acceleration until you get up to max speed.
Full-gas sprint continues for a duration of 10-12 seconds.
Recover for 30 seconds and then go again.
Repeat 3-5 times.
That’s a set.
Five minutes recovery and then repeat.
You’re looking to do 3-5 sets, or (if you’re using a power meter…) as many sets as you can without seeing a noticeable drop in peak power output.
Spin out your legs, and head back home.
Have fun!
M
Crosssports's Weblog 
Really liked yesterday’s post–especially the part about chaining your bikes together! Regarding those of us that raced a full CX season, and are now resting up for a road season, I was intrigued about your comment regarding base training. If we’ve already got a leg up on our base training due to racing cross, where does one start up when we’re back from our recovery 3 weeks?
Time off is a needed and an enjoyable activity, unfortunately it is hard to rest too long as I get older. For me I found that if I stay off the bike for longer than 2 weeks I really loose alot of fitness and it is much harder to get that fitness back. Therefore to help me not get burnt out on riding the bike, I don’t ride outside in the cold and wet weather – had enough of that. Now is my time to do indoor activity – weights and some power trainer intervals at the gym or at home and then maybe a group ride on the weekend. Later I transition to longer indoor trainer workouts. By February I am itching to get back on the bike more outside.